How We Decide

This book is about how human mind make decisions and how we can make better decisions. Following is the high level summary. Sometimes we need to think through the options we have and sometimes we need to listen to our emotions. The secret is to know when to use these different styles of thought. Reason and feelings have important strengths and weakness. Different situations require different strategies. How we decide should depend on what we are deciding. Our reasoning is like the charioteer and our emotions are the horses. People have disparaged the emotional brain, blaming our feelings for our mistakes. Emotions are crucial part of decision making. A brain that can't feel can't make up its mind. Since Plato we have been assured that a perfectly rational world would be perfect world. This is not true. The reality of the brain is that, sometimes, rationality can lead us astray. Choking is one of the example of the havoc that can be caused by too much thought. It's an illustration of rationality gone awry. One of the problem with feeling is that even when they are accurate, they can still be hard to articulate. Instead of going with the option that feels the best, a person starts going with the option that sounds the best, even if it's a bad idea. When we overthink at the wrong moment, we cut ourselves from the wisdom of our emotions. The worst decisions happen when the emotions are silent or overwhelming. In order to make the right decisions, the mind needs emotional input. The emotional input needs to exists in dialogue with the rational analysis. People in good mood are significantly better at solving hard problems that require insight than people who are cranky. This is because the brain areas associate with the executive control are preoccupied with managing the emotional life and it's hard for the executive control to focus on the problem. The reason our emotions are intelligent is that they've managed to turn mistakes into educational events. We are constantly benefitting from our experience, even though we are not conciosulsy aware of the benefits. Becoming an expert takes time and practice. Once we've developed expertise with requisite mistakes,it's important to trust our emotions when making decisions in that domain. It's feelings that capture the wisdom of experience. The first book to use the unexpected discoveries of neuroscience to help us make the best decisions Since Plato, philosophers have described the decision-making process as either rational or emotional: we carefully deliberate, or we blink and go with our gut. But as scientists break open the minds black box with the latest tools of neuroscience, theyre discovering that this is not how the mind works. Our best decisions are a finely tuned blend of both feeling and reasonand the precise mix depends on the situation. When buying a house, for example, its best to let our unconscious mull over the many variables. But when were picking a stock, intuition often leads us astray. The trick is to determine when to use the different parts of the brain, and to do this, we need to think harder (and smarter) about how we think. Jonah Lehrer arms us with the tools we need, drawing on cutting-edge research as well as the real-world experiences of a wide range of decidersfrom airplane pilots and hedge fund investors to serial killers and poker players. Lehrer shows how people are taking advantage of the new science to make better television shows, win more football games, and improve military intelligence. His goal is to answer two questions that are of interest to just about anyone, from CEOs to firefighters: How does the human mind make decisions? And how can we make those decisions better? Formats : EPUB, MOBI Quality : 5 Genre : Science, Self-Help Introduction The quarterback in the pocket The predictions of dopamine Fooled by a feeling The uses of reason Choking on thought The moral mind The brain is an argument The poker hand Coda. How We Decide provides insight into how people make decisions. The book approaches this question from a scientific perspective, and uses real world examples to help the reader understand.